


Rock Stars

by jotc



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-13
Updated: 2015-08-13
Packaged: 2018-04-14 13:22:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4566165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jotc/pseuds/jotc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the war clock stops, Doctors Gottlieb and Geiszler fight weariness to  join the historic celebration.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rock Stars

Doctors Hermann Gottlieb and Newton Geiszler arrived on the bridge so winded they could hardly speak. They took turns gasping out the news. Hermann noted with approval that for a rare change, Newton did not digress or ramble or speculate. The impending death of the human race proved sufficient to focus even his notoriously scattered intellect. Between the two of them, they provided a concise summary of the essentials: if the Jaeger team did not ride a kaiju carcass into the rift, the plan would fail.

At that point, Hermann should have dragged himself and his colleague off to medical. Properly speaking, they were due a host of post-drift tests, made all the more urgent by the fact that they’d drifted with a kaiju.

But Newton refused to budge, and Hermann didn’t have the heart to force the issue. Besides, they’d already passed the deadline for drift-triggered aneurysm, and everything else could wait. The fate of humanity hung in the balance, and if he was going to die, he wanted to die side by side with the man whose head he had shared. So he waited with the others until word came. The breach had been closed. Hercules Hansen stopped the war clock and an era ended. 

The base erupted in cheers. Hansen himself smiled slightly, but his eyes were shadowed with grief. The man had just lost his son and his commanding officer. Hermann knew he would stand solid in front of the others because they needed him to, but his world must be in ruins. He gripped Newton’s elbow and drew him close to Marshal Hansen.

“Marshal,” he said solemnly, and reached out to grasp the Marshal’s hand. Hansen gripped back, solid and vital. The man met his eyes, and the both nodded. Then Hansen moved on. Likely he would make contact with every person in the Shatterdome before the night was out.

Next to him, Newton babbled. “I don’t, I don’t, I don’t…”

“Newton,” he said softly.

That broke the stream long enough for Newton to take a long ragged breath and say, “I don’t know what to say to him. I mean, I should, his son, I should have said something. Why didn’t I say anything?”

“You didn’t need to, not right now,” Hermann told him, speaking quietly. “He’ll want to keep things together tonight. But we will offer more formal condolences at a later time.”

“Why don’t I know?” Newton asked. It came out as a plaintive wail. “Why don’t I know these things?”

He could feel Newton start to shake. This was reaction setting in. Something or other would have set it off, but now that Hermann had been inside his head, he understood. He had gotten an up-close look at the complex and contradictory nature of Dr. Geiszler’s social skills. 

Newton genuinely liked people. The soft-hearted romantic even liked genuine jerks. He easily made friends with the sort of people who were willing to tolerate his eccentricities. But Newton also met rejection on a regular basis. On his better days, he knew that he came on too strong for some. On his bad ones, not only did his social graces falter, his understanding of his own limitations faded. He found himself being pushed away without knowing why. And on his worst days, even those close to him could be counted on to lose patience.

Hermann had, oddly, been an exception. Though they had argued constantly, they had done so like siblings: ever ready to fight fiercely over trivia, and equally ready to come through for each other in a crisis. Newton had come to know what to expect of him, and come to trust that he would always be present.

Hermann tried to scrape up something reassuring. “Everyone struggles in these situations,” he offered.

“Not you. Why don’t you?”

“I do as well. But I’ve been instructed in how to behave. Newton, you grasp to find words because you wish desperately to ease his grief, and you have no words that will do so.”

Newton went still at his side, and for a moment Hermann feared he had made things worse. But then Newton’s face scrunched up, then relaxed. “Yeah,” he said, then repeated, “Yeah, okay. Yeah.”

“Shall we join the party?” he asked.

“You don’t have to, I know parties aren’t your thing, you don’t—”

“I shall make an exception, given that this is an historic occasion.”

Newton smiled, bright and true. After all these years, Hermann still marveled at the way the man’s mood could change so sharply. “Yeah. Yeah, I guess it is. We’re not dead!”

Hermann found himself smiling back, suddenly giddy with relief himself. Perhaps this was what Newton lived through all the time, he reflected. “We’re not,” he agreed.

#

The great Jaeger bay was packed with every living soul in the Shatterdome, most of them cheering and yelling. The noise was deafening.

“Are you sure about this?” Newton asked. “I know it’s not your scene. I mean…you don’t need to…”

He was most likely too embarrassed to say “to look after me.” But from the pasty look on Newton’s face, Hermann very much needed to do precisely that.

“We’ll both sleep better if we wind down a bit,” Hermann said firmly. He gripped Newton's elbow and steered him toward the open space of the Jaeger bays. He then honed in on the nearest couch, which someone must have dragged from its usual home in the rec room. It was occupied by two techs. Hermann intended to ask permission to join them, but instead they hastily stood. "Please sit," one said. The look on his face was very nearly reverent.

Well. Word had spread. At least among some select few, the two of them were, as Newton would have it, rock stars. Either that or they must look truly ghastly, and the others were afraid they would keel over. Newton hadn’t noticed their reaction yet. "Thank you," Hermann murmured. He unceremoniously shoved Newton toward the couch, then levered himself down with considerable more care. Newton was staring at him.

“What?” he asked irritably.

“Nothing.”

“I know I’m a bit of a mess. You are too, in case you hadn’t noticed.” Hermann self-consciously wiped at a smudge on his wrist.

“Dude. Nobody cares.”

“I suppose not, under the circumstances. Are your glasses bothering you?”

“A little,” Newton admitted.

“Having only one lens can’t be helping that post-drift headache. Tell me where you keep your spare and I’ll fetch them for you.”

Newton shook his head.

“Don’t be stubborn. Why not?”

It was a sign of how sluggish his own thoughts were that he had asked the question before he realized he wasn’t at all sure he could stand back up. He sighed, and thankfully Newton didn’t put him through the indignity of spelling it out.

A man he barely recognized as one of the welders walked up to them and said, “I just want to thank you, you know, for what you did. That was brave. Crazy, but brave.” The man held out his hand. Hermann shook it firmly. Newton reached out, his face crumpled in awkward confusion, and squeezed the man’s hand quickly before snatching his own back. Newton’s hand was visibly shaking.

“It was a team effort,” Hermann said firmly. “We were glad to do our part. Thank you.”

That wasn’t so bad. But the next man to come speak to them started to weep. Hermann knew quite well these were tears of reaction; he simply didn’t know how to respond. He settled for patting the man’s hand and wishing him well. Next to him, Newton was breathing far too fast.

More people thronged around. On a good day, Newton would have played court and loved every bit of it. He’d have joked and laughed with the happy ones, and dealt gracefully with the ones in tears. But now, Hermann suspected he was on the verge of a panic attack.

“Do you want to leave?” he asked.

“No!” Newton held a fist to his face and bit down on his own finger. And the crowd was thickening. Hermann saw Tendo Choi and waved frantically. The crowd parted back respectfully for the Shatterdome’s top operative, and Hermann sighed in relief.

“Hey, my man, how are you?” Tendo slung an arm around Newton’s shoulders and pulled him into a half-hug. Tendo, like Newton himself, spoke casually and easily to everyone he met. Unlike Newton, Tendo knew how to turn it off when he had to. He shook Hermann’s hand, then looked at Newton with obvious concern.

“It’s all a bit much, and I don’t think he’s eaten at all today,” Hermann said quietly. “Could you possibly find someone to bring him some orange juice and a sandwich? Or even toast?”

“Absolutely.” Tendo waved a couple of other staff members forward, spoke to them, then turned and crouched next to Hermann. Embarrassed at the discourtesy of making him crouch while he sat, Hermann leaned forward to stand. But the pain in his hip blazed up, and he froze in place.

“You stay put,” Tendo said firmly but kindly. “Do you need anything?” Tendo flicked his thumb as if popping a prescription bottle.

“Ah… perhaps later.” Their eyes met, and Hermann cocked his head just slightly in Newton’s direction. Tendo nodded slightly. He then settled in, despite lack of chair, and told amusing stories of his personal life. The rest of the crowd hung back, and Newton’s breathing steadied out.

“I just don’t know what to say to everyone,” Newton blurted out. It was a non sequitur plunked down in the middle of one of Tendo’s stories, but Tendo took it in stride.

“Both of you were saying exactly the right things in exactly the right way,” Tendo said firmly. “They need to thank you for their sake more than for yours. Don’t worry if you feel a little awkward, or if it shows. That’s not important. In fact, it shows you weren’t in it for the glory.”

Newton grinned a little. “I was,” he said. “I totally wanted to be a rock star.”

Tendo laughed. “Yeah, yeah. Whatever, dude, you’re still a hero.”

Someone showed up with orange juice and sandwiches—a full tray of both. He set the tray in front of Newton. Newton tried to pick up a glass, but his hand shook rather badly and he set it back down. Hermann picked it up, sipped enough to take the level down below the brim, and handed it to him.

Newton’s answering grin was downright brilliant.

“Yes, well, sharing germs seems a minor health hazard after everything else we’ve been through tonight,” Hermann groused. “Besides, I’m merely exposing you to my germs. I scarcely intend to expose myself to yours.” But it was all bluff, and Newton obviously knew it. Hermann hated unnecessary germ exposure, even on the part of someone else. This casual act of intimacy was a telling one.

Someone finally brought Tendo a chair, and he kept them company while Newton ate. Other than that one swallow of orange juice, Hermann didn’t join him. The pain had hit the stage where it left him nauseous.

Once he finished his sandwich, Newton looked at him with that same oddly piercing gaze. “Why don’t you stretch out?” he suggested.

“I’m fine like this,” Hermann said.

“It’ll keep the crowds at bay. Admit it, you’d be in bed if you weren’t babysitting me.”

“Perhaps,” he said, smiling slightly, “but for once I honestly did want to be at a party. As I said, it’s an historic occasion.”

That said, stretching out sounded awfully tempting. He certainly wouldn’t be the only one to put dignity on hold for the night. In the end, what decided him was the thought that he wasn’t at all sure he could make it to his room unaided. Besides, while he was making up his mind, Newton had stood up and gently nudged his shoulder, and really, he was simply too tired to protest. With some embarrassment, he realized he’d hoped to end up with his feet in Newton’s lap, but Newton had vacated the couch.

In time, laying flat would help, but making the transition left him sweating. Tendo held out a pill. Hermann sighed and took it.

Newton said, “Dude, the night is still young. Rest now, party later.”

He chuckled. Then, things did in fact turn more than a little blurry. The pill itself wasn’t enough to knock him out, but the pill eased the pain, and natural fatigue did the rest.

#

He dreamed of kaiju. Big, open spaces, constant companionship of the hive, and a casually brutal intent to destroy the human race. Hating them would be like hating locusts. Yet these were not locusts; they were intelligent, adaptive creatures. Indifferent, implacable, impersonal, and yet awe-inspiring.

The awe was not entirely his own. Part of him knew he was dreaming Newton’s dreams. How could he not, when he had shared the man’s thoughts? Oh, how Newton must be grieving.

Except he wasn’t. On one level he was, because he always grieved loss of life, and yet on another level he was not, because he celebrated the continuation of the human race, and because he knew the kaiju lived a beautiful, untroubled life in their home. Always together. Never lonely. It would be touching, if the kaiju did not come from an unknowable murderous race intent on genocide.

Hermann woke sweating, and yet feeling a trifle better. His hip still throbbed, but his headache had eased. Newton, Tendo, and two Jaeger techs sat nearby in folding chairs, trading stories. Someone must have brought a spare pair of Newton's glasses, as his lenses were now intact. Herman slowly eased himself up.

“There’s still sandwiches, do you want one?” Newton asked.

“No thank you,” Hermann said reflexively, then reconsidered. His stomach was steadier, and he hadn’t had dinner.

Newton grabbed the plate and sat down next to him, taking care to ease himself in place gently to avoid jostling him. Newton then said quietly, “I’m feeling better now that I’ve eaten, but Tendo’s not going to leave until he’s sure we’re both okay, and I think he wants to get laid tonight. Do you still want to party?”

Hermann shook his head. “I merely wanted to be present. Actually, what do you say to a visit to the lab?”

“Okay, sure.” Newton’s face looked suddenly very young and awash with uncertainty.

#

Hermann rarely looked at the lab as a gestalt. Often his gaze was turned inward as he visualized the interplay of equations and their response to shifting variables. Tonight he took it all in. The tape line, the odors of bleach and formaldehyde, the softly glowing computer monitors and the archaic giant chalkboards he loved so dearly.

“They’ll shut this place down soon, I guess, even though there’s still so much more to learn.” Newton sounded sad almost bitter.

“Perhaps not. We’ve impressed the world, and perhaps they will stay impressed for a year or two. Regardless, I should like us to stay together as research partners.”

“Dude, yes! What would I do without someone to constantly harass me about where I put my kaiju parts?”

“You’d drown yourself in formaldehyde, no doubt.”

Newton laughed, but then he looked away. Hermann’s mouth turned dry.

“I saw some things in the drift,” he managed to say. “Private things. About your private life. You don’t mind?”

Newton laughed, but it came out pained. “Dude. It’s nothing you didn’t already know. I’ve spent the last ten years telling you about every new date.”

“Yes, but I didn’t truly understand.”

Newton had described each new lover to Hermann as the answer to all his dreams. Each parting he treated as the end of the universe. Hermann had privately rolled his eyes and assumed that Newton simply liked the roller coaster. Things looked different from the inside, though. Now Hermann realized that just like casual friendships, Newton’s understanding of his lovers and his own part was erratic. Newton could be remarkably empathic, and yet he struggled to grasp why one lover would cheat after claiming he wanted fidelity, or why another would claim to want things casual only to grow jealous and possessive, or why another would claim to love him for his mind but resent the time he spent working. Hermann now realized that Newton had genuinely been trying to find a steady partner for years. He’d begun to struggle with increasing anxiety that something was wrong with him and he was simply unworthy.

“How much did you see of my own past?” Hermann asked.

“Basically nothing. I guess it wasn’t on your mind. Or maybe… I mean, not everyone dates?”

“I haven’t been entirely celibate, but it’s true that I’ve been much more conservative. An early bad experience put me off of casual encounters.”

That got Newton’s full attention. Awkwardly, Hermann said, “It wasn’t anything awful, really. I’d pulled an all-nighter studying with a bright and good looking fellow in my class. We took the test early in the morning, and we both felt certain we’d aced it, so we went back to my place for celebratory blow jobs. It was my first time and I thought it good clean fun, much better than my hand. Afterward we dozed side by side. I woke when he rolled over and slung his leg over me. I’m sure he meant no harm, but it didn’t sit well with my hip.”

Newton winced in sympathy.

“I cried out and startled the other lad. He… didn’t take it well. He reacted defensively. I told him I wasn’t angry, but he must remember certain things even in sleep. He grew cold and asked me, essentially, why I thought I’d ever get a repeat.”

“That guy was a jackass! I hope you found someone better? If you ever see him again, I’ll punch him out for you. I mean, I believe in nonviolence and all, but I’ll make an exception.”

Hermann smiled, warmed by Newton’s fervor. “Thank you, Newton. I don’t doubt he deserved it at the time, but perhaps he’s matured. Irregardless, I’ve long since made peace with that memory. I merely felt the desire to share my own history, and that moment did have an impact.”

“I’d never forget,” Newton said fiercely. Then he blushed. “Oh shit, dude, that wasn’t a come-on. I mean, I wasn’t—”

“I didn’t bring it up as a warning,” Hermann said hastily. He saw the seeds of panic on Newton’s face,and had no desire to leave him floundering. “I know you wouldn’t forget. You never have. I merely wished to share my past, as you’ve already shared your own. From here I can simplify. There’s been only one man of importance, really.”

After that, Hermann had taken care who he allowed to see him vulnerable. He had only one great romance in the past—a man who he’d been with for years, but who had left him when he joined the Shatterdome, saying the project was far too dangerous. Hermann might have forgiven the man if he’d ended things with grace, but his lover had pressed him hard in an effort to stop Hermann from signing on himself. Hermann simply couldn’t forgive that level of cowardice.

Newton listened closely. When Hermann brought the story to a close, he said simply, “That sucks, man. I’m sorry.”

“It’s quite all right,” Hermann said. “Years in the past. It’s just… as I said, I had the urge to reciprocate in terms of history.” His heart beat rapidly, and sweat coated his palms. “I suppose it was an overlong and unnecessary prologue, but I wished you to know what you were getting in to before I asked for a kiss. Because I should very much like a kiss.”

Newton’s face rapidly cycled through delight, apprehension, anxiety, and hope.

“This is stupid,” he said, but he slowly moved closer.

“I think not.”

“It would kill me if you left me.”

“It wouldn’t, but I won’t. Newton, of all my many flaws, when have I ever failed to make clear my own desires or to honor my word?”

“Never,” Newton said, his breath coming rapidly.

“I am not a difficult man to understand.”

“Then why did it take us so long?”

“Perhaps because the fate of the world was at stake, and neither of us could take chances. But I risk now only my own happiness, and yours, and even a man such as myself knows when to place a winning bet.”

With those words, Newton crossed the last of the space between them, and Hermann found himself being kissed quite thoroughly. Newton was always confident with his body. The man pulled him close, continued the kiss, and dug his fingertips into Hermann’s neck muscles in an intensely satisfying way. Hermann groaned with pleasure, and felt the response from Newton.

He pulled away. “I should like, of course, considerably more. Though I’m not certain I can stay awake for it tonight.”

Newton gave him a brilliant smile. “I'd like more too. I’ll be waiting.”


End file.
